Hey guys I just hung up a 3ft by 4ft canvas print and noticed with the direct lighting on it that you can kind of see thick parts a little more shiny than others. Am I missing parts of the canvas when I spray? As I go left to right and right to left from top to bottom am I jumping too far to create these gaps? I'm spraying with Timeless. Check out the image and let me know what you think.

Yes are missing something. And that's Glamour II. In terms of "leveling" the best canvas coating on Earth. "Leveling" being the tendency of painted surfaces to have the same look and reflectance qualities over a fairly wide range of thickness and application variations. In other words, "forgiving." As in, "Timeless is the least forgiving canvas coating I can think of."

I like 100% gloss because it lets the full dynamic range of my glossy canvases show through, without masking the darkest areas. But I get away with it because I mount my prints perfectly flat on Gatorfoam. But 100% gloss does not work well with stretching because you can never get the print perfectly flat and the resulting slight variations in hills and valleys show a variation of reflections across the surface in an unattractive way that you don't see with Gator mounted canvases, and of course there are the shiny edges visible on gallery wraps. So therefore, if you stretch you must also matte down the gloss somewhat. Doesn't take much, IMHO with GII 10 to 15% matte is enough, and anything more than 30% causes image death. Mounting is so superior, I don't understand why people want to stretch at all.

Bill, can I see an image of a finished product of one of your mounted prints? And the back of it too? Curious as to how you do all that. The cost of my stretcher bars is .75 cents a linear foot. And gatorboard is extremely expensive. I'd have to change my pricing dramatically to mount on gator.

You are seeing what I call hot spots, it's where you came a bit closer to the print. Did you spray or roll? Rolling can cause this too, but with Glamour II, you have more time to even it out.

If you are rolling Glamour II as Bill stated is much more forgiving in that it's self leveling. I only spray and switched to Timeless 2 years ago. Timeless dries so much faster and won't reactivate in heat, Glamour II will up to a period of time. Spraying with a gun it's very easy to get just a bit closer or farther away, you have to really work at staying an even distance. If you come in a bit closer, you lay down more glossy finish and it creates a hot spot or uneven glossy finish. I still get hot spots occasionally but as long as they don't show up under display light, I don't worry about them. Believe it or not, the best way to see them is once the print is stretched to look at it under low or indirect light across the face of the print, then all the coating imperfections will show up.

With Timeless on matte canvas, I have one process and with a glossy canvas like Crystalline, another. Spraying on a glossy surface is harder as you will often get an uneven pattern and it shows much faster.

The larger the canvas, the more the tendency to get this effect.

Another way to help avoid, is to make sure you change the pattern between spraying, i.e. up and down, then the next time go across. etc.

The best solution is using a glossy finished canvas, but finding one that is durable and wont' rub off during the stretching is very hard to do. You also have to be careful where the print will be shown as many times a cleaning crew will spray it and, that's it. Aqueous ink will come right off unless it's coated.

I considering switching to the Fuji system, mainly due to the fact that I believe the gun sprays a more even and consistent pattern.

The most helpful thing a newbie HVLP user can do if make a video of himself spraying, taken from the side. He will see himself speeding up over the entire session, flicking the gun in bizarre ways near the ends of each pass, and generally either pulling away or drifting closer during each pass. Best investment I ever made was the Fuji system I have used for several years now. It is 100% predictable and never, ever misbehaves. When talking about your everyday equipment, there is nothing better than predictability, and if you can buy predictability for mere money then it's always worth it. At this point it is amortized to a few pennies per square foot.

Gatorboard is expensive, and so are a lot of other tools and consumables. But time is expensive too. If using a particular technique is faster than some other technique, you most of the time will be better off with the faster but more expensive method. I can Gator mount a lot of big canvases in an hour, and I can build very attractive looking frames pretty quick, too.

What my frames look like is a 3 to 4.5" wide moulding surrounding a coated canvas print. No glazing, no liners, no mattes. Just classic, canvas + frame presentation in the grand style. The back of the frames looks like a big, black piece of Gator held in position by some Fletcher Points (which are like flat nails), plus there's a wire loop for 2-point, sideways figure 8 hanging, and some instructions as to how to do that. I don't bother with backing and nobody seems to mind, it's a non issue. The print is hermetically sealed between coating on the front and glue + Gator on the back...don't need no stinkin' cover!

There are other reasons I use Gator, such as arthritic hands. And there are logistic advantages of accumulating a back log of Gator mounted, but unframed prints which means I am never more than an hour from slapping one of those mounted prints into a quickly completed frame and taking it down to a gallery as an instant replacement. The main advantage is, it's easier to store flat Gator than framed pieces.

My most usual parting of Gator is 2, 21 x about 60" prints, plus one roughly 24 by about 43" print per sheet, which works out to an average of $14 per piece for the Gator. Not bad, really, considering time to mount is no more than a few minutes. That formula also makes very optimal use of a single, 8 foot long length of 44" canvas, which nicely fits the coroplast sheet I use as a coating backing, and which can be in one piece be applied to the Gator, yielding three mounted prints in one step. So I'm near 100% optimal use of time materials with that particular formula, and I'm way ahead on efficiency. It's all about efficiency, even with art. Waste not, wan't not. Anybody doing it the old fashioned can not compete.